Earlier this year, I joined thousands of people around the world in getting dunked with ice water for a good cause. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has brought needed attention to a devastating disease. But in terms of sheer numbers it’s not necessarily the one we should be most worried about. The top three killers in Canada are cancer, heart disease and strokes, 2011 data from Statistics Canada shows. Collectively these diseases killed 133,386 Canadians that year.

Given how critical fitness is to overall health, it’s worth taking a look at exercise in the one place nearly all of us will spend a good chunk of our lives: the workplace. While my observations are anecdotal — pulled from experiences at HootSuite — I think the lessons learned apply more broadly.

Building a culture of fitness At HootSuite, a tech company with about 600 employees focused on social media, exercise before, during and after working hours is encouraged. When we moved into a new facility several years ago, we installed a small gym and yoga room, as well as showers and changing rooms. Facilities are modest compared to those at some companies, but they’re well used. Yoga classes are packed before work, at lunch and after work. In the gym, volunteers from our company lead sweaty bootcamps and cross-training classes. Groups set out from the office for lunchtime runs and evening hikes. We have a hockey team and a road cycling team and even a Quidditch team that does battle on broomsticks in the park.

But, when it comes to promoting fitness on the job, dedicated facilities and organized teams like these are hardly necessities. Having the right workplace culture is far more important. In our cramped startup offices on the industrial side of Vancouver, we couldn’t afford a gym. (In fact, we couldn’t even afford phones.) But we did hang a fingerboard on the wall for pull-ups. We brought in yoga balls for chairs. We encouraged employees to cycle to work, even though that meant cramming our office entryway full of bicycles because it was too sketchy to park outside. And we made it clear that anyone could block off an hour for exercise during the day, provided it didn’t conflict with meetings and they made up the time (by having lunch at their desks, for instance).

Return on investment I’m picturing old-school managers out there rolling their eyes. The manager’s job, after all, is to get results from employees, not keep them fit. On a practical level, allowing and encouraging employees to exercise at work makes sense. I see employees return from workouts refreshed and better focused on their jobs. Time lost on exercise is made back and more in terms of improved productivity. And research backs this up.

A study presented to the American College of Sports Medicine found that workers who spent 30 to 60 minutes at lunch exercising reported an average performance boost of 15%. Sixty per cent of employees said their time management skills, mental performance and ability to meet deadlines improved on the days they exercised. Workers in the study were less likely to suffer from post-lunch energy dips after exercising and also reported improvements in mood.

Then there are the longer-term benefits: Healthy, active employees take fewer sick days and bring more energy to the workplace. A 2011 study published in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine showed that incorporating just two and a half hours of exercise a week into the workday led to a noticeable reduction in absences. Perhaps most importantly, fit and healthy workers are less prone to exactly the kinds of preventable, debilitating illnesses that take such a heavy toll on society.

Yoga for entrepreneurs I don’t think I could have steered my company to where it is without regular exercise. In the past six years, we’ve grown from seven employees to an operation with offices around the world. It’s been a fun ride but not exactly the smoothest one. In the beginning, I was responsible for everything from marketing and human resources, to sales, product development and finance, often working 16-hour days for weeks at a stretch.

Later came the stress associated with scaling a tiny company into a worldwide operation, adding dozens of employees a week and outgrowing offices every few months. These are all good problems to have, but I wouldn’t have been able to maintain composure and focus amid this chaos without taking a little time each day for exercise — in my case, yoga.

Growing up, I was active in sports, playing ultimate frisbee, mountain climbing and cycling. But just as HootSuite was ramping up, back injuries caught up with me. I turned to yoga to strengthen my core and give my body time to heal, but quickly discovered the physical benefits were matched by the mental ones. It gave me time to clear my head, unpack the volumes of new information I was absorbing each day and come back with a new, clearer perspective on the problems at hand.

Companies that sweat together, stay together At the end of the day, it’s not the type of exercise so much as providing a space in the workplace where fitness can thrive. There’s a saying that couples who sweat together stay together. I think it’s just as true for employees. Through the years, the culture of fitness in our office has grown with the enthusiasm of new employees. We have ultramarathoners who run 50 miles at a stretch, elite cyclists and triathletes, personal trainers, avid rowers and sailors, yogis and hardcore hikers and, of course, lots of people like me who just like a good workout.

Exercise in the office isn’t a new idea. But it’s such a clear win-win in terms of health, morale and productivity that I think it deserves to be put back in the spotlight. Considering how pervasive heart disease and other preventable illnesses are, it’s not an exaggeration to say our future — as healthy people, healthy companies and a healthy society — may depend on it.